So many times I have watched Sammi sitting quietly and just wondered what on earth was going through her head. I think that is the great mystery for parents about their children. You watch your child grow, you know their likes and interests. You can even guess the reactions they’ll have to different situations or food or challenges, but in the end, when they sit quietly (which rarely happens) we are left wondering what is running through their heads.

Are they complex, problem solving, abstract thoughts or simple thoughts about their immediate environment? How can we get at that information without affecting the content of what’s shared? I can figure out a lot when I watch Sammi play. She often recreates experiences she’s recently had and then manipulated them to change outcomes. But sometimes there are no leads to go from.

We had the opportunity today to use Cherish Bound‘s Child Chat cards to start conversations that gave us some interesting insight into Sammi’s thoughts. Each card contains a question to prompt a child to talk about a particular topic. The Child Chat cards contain questions that come from a variety of aspects of a child’s life: school, about me, my family. My mom fanned the deck of cards out and let Sammi choose any card she wanted. Then we asked her the question and she answered. Some questions brought back memories for me that I shared with my mom and we were able to tell Sammi some fun stories.

Sammi’s Cute Answers

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
S: A big girl

Q: What is your favorite TV show and why?
S: Curious George because it’s fun.

Q:On rainy, snowy or extra hot days, what does your family do for fun inside?
S: Build tree houses.

Q: What is a lesson that you learned from your teacher this year?
S: To be nice.

Q: Describe something that was really hard for you and now is easy.
S: Counting.

One of the cards asked what happens in your family when you lose a tooth. This hasn’t happened yet for our children and isn’t something we’ve ever talked about. I almost moved on after reading the question, but at the last moment it dawned on me that this had opened a door to talk about the tooth fairy in a context where Sammi was ready to understand the concept. This worked because Sammi was really engaged in the activity of reading the questions and answering them.

After we had moved on from the cards, we found Sammi playing the card game on her own. She was making up questions for her pretend friends and stuffed animals to answer. She also loved it so much she wanted to do it with her daddy when he came home. I was worried that the cards might be above what she could understand or what she’d be interested in doing. I’m glad I was wrong! I learned a lot about Sammi and what she thinks about.

As part of the Fall Fling giveaway, Cherish Bound is providing one winner with a set of Child Chat cards. They are also giving away the Fall Story Starter book to another winner. If you haven’t entered yet, the deadline has been extended to Wednesday, Sept 30. Winners will be announced Thursday Oct 1. Leave a comment on the Join the Fall Fling! post to enter. Leave a comment on this post for an extra entry. I’d love to hear what your child is thinking and how you figured it out.

I first learned about Sprig Toys when they started following me on Twitter. After exploring their website I approached them about the possibility of doing a product review. This may not appear to be significant, but for me, for this blog, it was. I want this blog to focus on how little ones develop and how parents and caregivers can encourage that development, primarily through interacting with the child.

When it comes to toys, I am highly selective. As the wife of a student, I am also very careful about where I spend my money. I’m only interested in toys that match my philosophy of how children play and toys that encourage little ones’ development. After reading through Sprig Toys product descriptions, I knew I had found a company that matched my philosophy.

Inspired by our collective desire to keep kids active and the planet healthy, Team Sprig is dedicated to infusing creativity, smart design, quality manufacturing, earth-friendly materials, product satisfaction and responsible business practices into a superior line of fun, kid-powered toys.

We help make the world a better place and we get kids off the couch. Pretty cool, huh?

I love that the toys are kid-powered.

So even though they have lights and sounds, they only work through energy created by the motion of the toys moving. The Discover Rig that we received to play with has a handle bar that the girls can hold onto to push the rig around. It’s the perfect height even for Elli to push as she toddles around the play room. Elli isn’t quite strong enough to push it so that it makes the lights and sounds work. Sammi can get the lights to come on, but she can’t push it hard enough for long enough to get the story sounds to play all the way through.

That doesn’t really matter to them, though. At this age, they are content to push it around, take it apart and put it back together again and make up their own stories about where they are going and what they are putting in the basket on top. They actually played really well together with this toy. I was afraid they’d argue over who got to push it, but they didn’t. They took turns well and Sammi thought of creative ways to still play with it while Elli was pushing it around.

I love their eco-friendly approach.

Another feature that I like has to do with their eco-friendly approach to toy design. They use recycled milk jugs as the material for the toys. I love the feel of it and the weight it gives to the toys. They’ve also designed the toys to be used in water, sand, dirt, any outdoors environment. We tested this when we took it to the sandbox at the park.

The Discover Rig has a man who sits in the driver seat. There is a USB looking plug that he connects to that triggers which stories are heard. I was a little worried letting the girls play with it in the sand for fear that it would get clogged from the sand and not work. As I watched them, they played pretty carelessly with it in the sand. They took the guy out and tossed him around. They dumped sand in and out. After a while I went to check on it, hesitantly. But, as far as I could see, there was no sand stuck in the USB looking connection. When I plugged the guy in, it still worked just fine. I was so happy they hadn’t ruined it and that I hadn’t ruined their fun by being unnecessarily concerned about keeping it clean. I don’t know how it holds up to water; I’ll leave that for someone else to try!

Not just for boys!

Another thing I love about these toys is that my GIRLS love them. Most of the pictures of kids on the Sprig Toys website are boys playing with the toys. But they aren’t just for boys. Girls can also enjoy loading up the rig and carting things around, even if those things are their dolls. I look forward to adding more Sprig toys to our collection. I just haven’t decided which to buy next.

The Fall Fling is still underway. Tomorrow is the last day to enter the giveaway. Please leave a comment on Join the Fall Fling! to enter the giveaway. Comments on this post will give you an extra entry. Check out the cool prizes here.

Fall is not officially here for me until I’ve made and devoured pumpkin bread. The very thought of pumpkin bread makes my mouth water and I usually have to drop everything to make some. That’s why I made some right before writing this post so I wouldn’t get interrupted!

While we were waiting for the bread to cool, Sammi wanted to play with play dough. My mom, who’s visiting, is very creative and always has the patience and energy to pull out all the stops when it comes to “projects” with Sammi. So she pulled out the play dough and found that Sammi has swirled the red and yellow together. She took this opportunity to teach Sammi about making new colors.

She squished the yellow and red together until there made a perfect pumpkin orange color. Then, to solidify the concept, she mixed the blue and (now) orange together to make a green color for the stem. Sammi loved making new colors. Now we were ready to make the pumpkins.

We made balls of orange play dough then used a play dough knife to make the stripes on the pumpkin. We showed Sammi how and let her do her own. I was sure she’d demolish the ball but it actually remained fairly round. I was very impressed. Then we rolled out a little of the green and added it to the top for a stem.

We put all our pumpkins together and had a little pumpkin patch. I pulled out a Cinderella book from the shelf and showed Sammi the page where the Fairy Godmother changed the pumpkin into a carriage. Sammi loved that and made a magic wand to go with the pumpkins.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Fall aspect of this week. The weather was slightly cooler. The rain finally let up. And we went to the Knoxville Zoo. One of our most favorite places. I haven’t been able to talk Sammi into this really cool city park because she always chooses the zoo. I love the zoo in the fall and winter because the animals are more active in the cooler weather.

This weeks posts seemed to really hit the heart and emotion of the fall season.

Melitsa from Play-Activities wrote about natural play that focused on a stick she and her boys found in their yard. This stick became the center of their outside, imaginative play for the week. They were very creative in finding different uses for this stick, from snake to microphone. Read the explanation of her picture in her Tell Me Thursday post.

McAlpine from the Soul of Japan shared a beautiful picture from a natural spring in Japan. I would love to take a hike to this location and just soak in the fall foliage.

Suzanne from Crunchy Green Mom shared the special memories she associates with fall. Her post is beautiful written and captures her emotions so vividly.

Renee left her thoughts on fall in a comment: “I don’t have a blog so I’m just going to tell you right here what we did to celebrate Fall tonight! My little girl dressed up in her Halloween costume from last year (yes, it’s a little snug but she didn’t care!) and hunted “pumpkins” (orange plastic eggs from Easter) that had candy, fruit snacks, etc. in them that I hid around the inside of our house. I would have hid them outside but I live in the south where the rains have been HORRIBLE for the past week and the yard is MUSH. I can’t tell you how much fun she had Indoor Trick or Treating! She can’t wait to Trick or Treat for real soon.”

There’s still time to share your post on the new fall season. Leave a link to your post on the Join the Fall Fling! post as well as enter to win one of the many prizes in the giveaway.

The idea for the Fall Fling really started off with the opportunity to work with CSNStores.com’s children’s site All Children’s Furniture. They carry everything from kids chairs to craft supplies with a whole lot of fun toys in between. We chose to review the Melissa and Doug Pattern Blocks because Sammi is lately obsessed with shapes.

First off, I love Melissa and Doug products. I like that they are all wood because they have great texture and feel solid. I’m not a fan of flimsy toys that are ready for the garbage the first time the girls look at them. We have the Band in a Box set from Melissa and Doug. It has withstood beatings from many children in two different states now and is none the worse for wear.

Sammi is at a stage where she is starting to see how little things can be put together to get something new. That combined with her new love of shapes led to the natural choice of the Pattern Blocks. The day we received them in the mail was like Christmas for her. We opened the box, removed the plastic and she went to town.

She pulled out each board and completed the picture. She carried them around the room and showed them to me and to my mom. She was so excited she had made the picture. She also loved talking about the shapes and the colors of each block. After that excitement had run its course, I showed her that you can turn over the picture boards and there’s anew picture waiting to be completed. She loved it!

All Children’s Furniture has a large selection of toys, furniture and other accessories for little ones. I thought their website was easy to navigate and the pricing/shipping was easy to figure out. The only thing I was surprised by was that after our blocks were ordered, I was automatically added to their email list. It’s easy enough to change your subscription status, I just wasn’t ready for the emails to start showing up.

We love music in our house. We are always singing a song or making up a melody to accompany our conversations. We listen to music constantly in the car. Now that we live in such a rural area, we spend a lot more time listening to music. We were recently contacted by Sara Fischer Hodges about her husband’s new album, KiddyDittys (A Kid’s Album for Adults). I was excited to work with Sara in sharing John Jeffrey Hodges latest CD.

We’ve been listening on and off again to this CD for several weeks now. John’s voice is deep and crooner-like. He brings energy to his music without being hyper like some kid music out there (I’m thinking camp song CDs, here). It’s a nice change of pace for evening listening or long Sunday drives.

Brent and I also really like his lyrics. This album is written from a parent’s perspective and covers everything from the humorous side of parenting (Garbage Day) to the sentimental (Your Father). We chuckled through the whole song Garbage Day because it was so true to life. They lyrics start “If you don’t do what I say, I’m going to take those toys away and put them in the garbage on garbage day. I’m gonna throw those toys away!” How often I have felt that. I have even made that threat a few times.

John Jeffrey Hodges brings a fresh perspective to the for-kids music scene. I like that his songs are from a parent’s point of view and remind me of all the aspects of parenting. He is unique as is the artwork on his CD. Sara shared this story with me about the cover:

The cover art for KiddyDittys (A Kid’s Album for Adults) was painted by Dave Osmun (“Oz”) of Temple, NH. Dave is one of Jeff’s oldest and dearest friends. He’s an amazing human being and one of the most talented people you will ever meet. Oz has been confined to a wheelchair for over 30 years as the result of an accident. He is a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down, and paints with a paintbrush attached to a stick which he holds in his mouth.

The painting on the cover was done specifically for this project. Jeff and Oz met as teenagers in the small town of Siasconset (‘Sconset), MA, on Nantucket Island’s eastern shore, where their families spent summers – and where both Jeff and Oz return each year to spend time with each other and many of their childhood friends who have known each other for close to 50 years.

The painting reflects the ‘Sconset bluff as well as Sankaty Lighthouse and Sesachacha Pond. If you look closely, however, you’ll see that the painting also represents a subliminal guitar. This painting was Oz’s concept and we could not be more proud or happy to have this incredible piece of art as our cover for this album.

There are two copies of KiddyDittys (A Kid’s Album for Adults) available to participants in the Fall Fling. If you haven’t already, please comment on the post, Join the Fall Fling to enter the giveaway. Please leave a comment here for an additional entry.

Even though my little ones aren’t in school yet, Fall still means to me new crayons and pencils, new backpacks and, most importantly, new books. As an only child, I have long loved books. They were friends when I was bored and home, alone, on a mountain in Vermont. In fact, that is where I found my passion for reading late into the night. It was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Still one of my favorites.

But I digress. Getting a new book is always a treat for me. I think because of my love of reading and Sammi’s own personality, she has also become a little book lover. I mentioned on Saturday that we received a couple books from Scholastic recently: I’m Your Bus and Mama Says: A Book of Love for Mothers and Sons. The third book that came in our package was I Spy A To Z by Jean Marzollo and photography by Walter Wick.

Back when we lived in Utah (it feels so much longer ago than it really is) we went to the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University and saw the Walter Wick exhibit. It was fantastic. They had display cases with some of the actual objects used in the pictures positioned close to the pictures where the objects were used. Brent and Sammi spent a good deal of time choosing an object and then looking at all the pictures until they found the object again. Sammi love it.

When I saw this book, I thought it would be a great way to remember that exhibit. But I was wary of how much Sammi would get the concept of finding specific objects in the pictures. I also wasn’t sure how her attention span would hold up to the length of the book. She is only barely three, after all! But again, she surprised me.

She wanted to look at the book because it was new and exciting. We opened it up to the beginning and I read the first riddle to her. Then we looked at the pictures in the riddle and looked for them in the bigger picture. The first page she wasn’t all that sure what we were ding and I figured it was a lost cause. I was ready to put the book away for 6 months or even a year. But she wanted me to read another page. So I did.

On the second page, it clicked. She got the point of the riddle and the book came to life for her. She needed some help finding them, but she was thoroughly engaged in this book. It is now a regular bedtime book. There are a variety of layouts for the objects, but Sammi prefers the clean look of a white background with a few objects arranged in a more organized manner. She still likes to look at the other pages, but she only wants to find the objects on the “white pages” as we now call them.

I’m surprised and pleased that she likes this book already. It’s fun to look at together. As I also mentioned on Saturday, Scholastic and joined the Fall Fling by offering a copy of Mama Says to one lucky reader. Click here to leave a comment, if you haven’t already, to enter the giveaway. Please, leave a comment on this post, too for an additional entry!

We’ve decided that a synonym for Fall in Tennessee is Rain. We’ve had lots and lots of rainy days. So the last time we were at the grocery store, we treated ourselves to some new nail polish. Sammi helped me pick out two colors. We chose a pretty pink and a purple-tinted, sparkle-filled polish.This is a great rainy day activity, particularly with bright colors that make it feel like there’s sunshine inside.

I’ve been letting Sammi paint my nails for quite some time and it’s so amazing how much she has improved. It’s still a bit thick in areas ans we’re working on making smooth strokes, but she can completely cover the nail with polish.Sometimes even the skin, too. But it rubs off easily in a day so I never worry about cleaning it up.

This activity definitely goes smoother for us when I don’t care how my nails turn out. I’ve had a lot of fun showing off my imperfectly painted nails and going on about how Sammi did it all by herself. As a proud mama, I’m giving her confidence to keep trying and with experience she improves. I have gotten some looks when they were really clumpy but when I brag on Sammi doing it, I usually get smiles and ahs.

This is not an activity just for little girls! Even little boys need practice painting and they are just as interested in doing what mommy does as little girls. Don’t let daddy give you or your son grief about letting him paint your nails. It is healthy for all children to imitate the behavior they see as a way of developing skills and finding their own place in life. Not to mention there is something endearing about Brent painting my nails for me when I’m pregnant and not feeling very pretty. I’m glad he already knew how 🙂

Fall is such a fun time of year. Most days it is still warm enough to play outside, but the weather is cooling off so it’s more bearable. It gets dark earlier so we get to enjoy night time things like firework shows, fireflies and stars without the girls staying up way past their bedtime.

Nothing shouts Fall for us like a good County or State Fair. We went to the Claiborne County Fair a few weeks back and enjoyed rides and an authentic tractor pull. I got to ride the airplane ride with Elli and Sammi. Sammi loved it. Elli was don’t that excited so she didn’t go on any more rides. Sammi went on all the rides she was tall enough for and enjoyed every second of it.

Sammi also started preschool a few weeks ago. This is her first day of preschool. She picked out her backpack (red) and lunchbox (Tinkerbell, of course). She seems to enjoy it a lot and has spouted off random information we didn’t know she knew. She loves being at preschool without Mommy or Elli there. I think it gives her a feeling of independence and grown-upness.

We’ve had a lot of fun this fall in our new home in a new state. One thing we’ve gotten back to after a long summer break is visiting the library weekly. I have started volunteering at the Bell County Library doing a story time program for babies and toddlers called Laptime. So far only people I already know are coming, but I hope it grows and the community starts to participate.

Crafts are great any time of year, but I really like doing them in the fall with new supplies purchased during the back-to-school sales. Sammi and I had fun making this Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Mobile. We used Crayola watercolors and I was shocked at how vibrant the colors turned out. I wasn’t sold on the brand before, but I’m totally converted now!

The Fall Fling is in full swing. There’s still plenty of time to enter for the great prizes we’re giving away. We’d also love to hear how you celebrate the new Fall season. Just leave a comment on the Fall Fling post with a link to your post.

Reading is a perfect activity any time of year, if you ask me, but I particularly enjoy reading in the fall. The cool weather, the start of the school year, the ability to curl up with a blanket again and not melt from the heat of summer are all reasons why I enjoy reading in the fall.

I was hesitant at first since my little ones are girls. I wasn’t sure how Sammi would react to a book focused on boys. But she saw it and insisted I read it. Thank goodness she loves books and didn’t judge this one by its cover. To my surprise, she loved the book. I read it two or three times through the very first time we sat down to read it.

The book is written in verse. Each page is devoted to the relationship between mother and son in a different culture. As a linguist I loved that they included the text in English and the language of the culture on each page. Unfortunately they didn’t include any of the languages I know, but they did have Russian (by far more popular than Bulgarian) and I was able to sound out the Cyrillic alphabet to make an attempt at reading it.

They do have one page for Japan and since Brent knows Japanese, Sammi always insists he read the Japanese lines after I read the English. She was very disappointed one day when we read the book while Brent was at school and I couldn’t read the Japanese page. Maybe someday I’ll get around to learning Japanese.

I was surprised that this book intended for mothers and sons had such appeal to my daughter. But she really enjoys it. Even when I pulled it off the shelf to write the review she wanted us to drop everything to read it again. The message is one of strength, love and wisdom. A message that rings true for any parent-child relationship, regardless of gender.